Saturday, May 28, 2016

Artisan Manon Richard infuses a bit of magic into her collection of playful phosphorescent jewelry. Crafting the likes of earrings, pendants, and rings, she is inspired by both the natural world and mystical realm, combining elements of Earth’s beauty with a mysterious turquoise glow. The results are perfect for someone who wants their heart to feel a little lighter.

Richard uses high-quality glow-in-the-dark materials to accentuate small details within each piece—such as the wing of a butterfly or surface of a bead. To get the most of its stunning color, she suggests you charge the phosphorescent by holding it under a light for a few minutes or wearing it in the sun.

We all know that those plastic six-pack rings holding together our favorite beverages have a nasty tendency to leach back into the environment and wreak havoc for wildlife. That’s why a new development by Saltwater Brewery of Delray Beach, Florida has a lot of people talking. The company, in partnership with an organization called We Believers, has created a biodegradable, compostable, and edible six-pack ring. The brilliant invention is made from barley and wheat remnants that are leftover from the brewing process and could mean saving thousands of lives.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of marine mammals die from consumption of plastic rubbish, but Saltwater Brewery hopes to change this. Their digestible six-pack holders could revolutionize the pointless deaths that occur due to human waste destroying natural ecosystems. “We've already started to get orders from craft breweries. They want to know how quickly we can ramp up to bring this product to market,” says We Believers partner Marco Vega, a contributor to the project. “The response has been phenomenal.”

"We want to create quality beer, but any way we can promote educational awareness of the ocean environment and making sure that it's healthy, that's what we want to do,” says Chris Gove, president of Saltwater Brewery. “We hope to influence the big guys, and hopefully inspire them to get on board.” Though production of this biodegradable creation is slightly more expensive than the typical plastic six-pack, the brewery hopes to target fisherman, surfers, and other ocean lovers who don't mind paying a little extra to chip in and save the environment.

At first, this photo shared by Facebook user Arron Bevin looks like an ordinary wall. Look again, and there’s an optical illusion hidden in the bricks.

Still can’t see it? Neither could the majority of the 44 thousand commenters on the original post. Bevin himself says it took “a good five minutes” to spot the element that’s disguised by a trick of the eyes, and others (including all of us here at My Modern Met, for example) gave up after several straight minutes of desperate squinting.

Scroll down if you want to reveal the solution to the optical smoke and mirrors—and we’ve also wedged a clue into this sentence.

Here's another chance to carefully study the picture before the big reveal.

Here's a closer look at the area to focus on. Got it yet? (If not, don't worry, you're not alone.)

Here it is. Do you see it?

That's a cigar sticking out from between the bricks. Now that you've seen it, can you unsee it?

Stereotypes can sometimes pin sloths as sweet but lazy; however, Sam Trull says this assumption is far from the truth—the "lazy" part, anyway. Trull is the self-proclaimed "Mother of Sloths" and the primatologist and photographer behind Primatography, an organization using documentary photos to raise awareness about wildlife conservation. She is also the co-founder of The Sloth Institute Costa Rica, which rescues and rehabilitates the cute clawed animals before sending them back out to brave their natural habitats.

Trull has worked with wildlife for almost 20 years, but she first found her soft spot for sloths in 2013 as the Wildlife Manager at Kids Saving the Rainforest, an animal rehabilitation clinic on the Pacific Coast. There, she took a liking to a two-week-old orphaned sloth named Kermie and cared for him with tender love, meals, and cuddles before the time came to release him into the wild. She has modeled that process at The Sloth Institute since its start in 2014, and it's a gentle, slow-moving undertaking—just like the little animals.

When the sloths seem grown and healthy enough to depart, Trull and her team arrange a 19-foot-cubed cage near the rehabilitation center and leave the door open, so the four-legged friends can come and go freely. They ultimately spend enough time eating and exploring in the wild territory that they abandon the enclosures for good. The procedure is called a "soft release," and Trull has performed it successfully with several sloths who are now thriving in the jungle, though the team checks up on them to ensure that they're adapting with their other native companions.

Ultimately, there's much more to discover and understand about the animals' sociology, biology, and ecology, so the outcome isn't always a happy one. Nonetheless, Trull says it's clear that prolonged captivity causes more casualties than freedom—particularly in tourism-driven environments that inflict unwarranted stress through too much human interaction—which encourages her to liberate the sloths as frequently as she can. As long as they're under the Institute's care, it's Trull's mission to glean as much researched data as possible and then to educate the public accordingly.

Trull has already learned one broader lesson from her heartwarming work: "They have also taught me to never give up ... that the only way to make progress in life is to persevere through each and every obstacle with the knowledge that another one is coming." (We told you the sloths aren't lazy.) They've also taught her about unconditional, immeasurable love—so much so that she made a book called Slothlove, sharing stories and photos of sloths she's saved over the years. You can meet a few of them in the shots below.

Artist Liz West has recently revealed an ambitious piece that explores the visual impact of light and reflections within an ancient place of worship. The piece casts a brilliant rainbow spectrum throughout the architecture of the historic St. John’s Church in North Lincolnshire, UK. Composed of over 700 mirrors in 15 acrylic shades, Our Color Reflection causes light rays and vivid hues to radiate throughout the 125-year-old building.

"It is playful, elegant, engaging, and probably my most thoughtful and quiet work," West says of her installation. A tasteful modern spin on the stained-glass motif, West’s orbs flood the building with a rich, meditative atmosphere. Set at different heights and sizes, the mirrors reflect the roof space and rafters to reveal bits of the historic neo-gothic architecture to a crowd of eager visitors. West researched the history and background of the building prior to implementing her art, and she explains: "This has allowed me to make sure the work is grounded within its site but also holds its own voice within the grandeur and information that the space brings to the conversation."

Placing emphasis on the changes brought about by shifting natural light, the dynamic piece transforms depending on the time of day, casting the church into a vibrant array of varied tones. Visitors can further immerse themselves in the artwork as they catch glimpses of their reflection in the hundreds of mirrors scattered throughout the building.Our Color Reflection was completed for the 20-21 Visual Arts Centre after having renovated the church into an exhibition space, and is on display now through June 25, 2016.

Learning to communicate fluently in another language is incredibly tough, and misunderstandings that stem from little conversational mistakes can inhibit multicultural connections. A company named Waverly Labs is dreaming of a world without these language barriers, and their answer comes in the form of a simple yet brilliant new in-ear device. The Pilot is a tiny, wearable gadget that uses translation technology to allow two people to speak in different languages and (almost) instantly understand one another.

The little earpiece is accompanied by an app that allows users to scroll through their phones and select which languages they would like to communicate in. Each piece is designed to pick up on common dialects of the selected language, meaning one can converse with any other person who is also wearing an earpiece, and the system works offline and overseas. The Manhattan-based company plans to introduce the system in Latin/romance languages such as English, Spanish, French and Italian but eventually this will grow to include many others such as East Asian, Hindi, Semitic, Arabic and Slavic. The company aims to release The Pilot late fall/early winter of this year, and due to an extraordinary level of public interest, will sell the product on a first come, first serve basis.

After promotional early bird sales of the product are completed, the Pilot is expected to retail at between $249-$299. Each package includes both a Pilot and a secondary earpiece, plus charger and accompanying app. If you want to keep an eye on this amazing advancement in global communication possibilities, developmental updates are available on the company's Indiegogo page.